ClientEarth launches new air pollution legal action against UK government

Date added: November 7, 2017

ClientEarth is taking legal action against the UK Government for a 3rd time, over its persistent failure to deal with illegal air pollution across the country. This comes just a year after ClientEarth’s High Court victory forcing ministers to develop plans to tackle the problem. The environmental lawyers said the Defra plans still fell far short of what was needed to bring air pollution to within legal limits as soon as possible. ClientEarth CEO James Thornton said they had no choice but to take legal action, to get clarity from government. ClientEarth names the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Transport Secretary and the Cabinet Secretary for Environment and Rural Affairs in the Welsh Government as defendants. ClientEarth’s grounds for judicial review are: The latest plan backtracks on previous commitments to order 5 cities to introduce clean air zones by 2020; 2. The plan does not require any action in 45 local authorities in England, despite them having illegal levels of air pollution. 3. The plan does not require any action by Wales to bring down air pollution as quickly as possible. In order to avoid any further delay to ongoing work by Defra, DfT and local authorities, ClientEarth is not calling for the current plan to be overturned, but instead to be supplemented.
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ClientEarth launches new air pollution legal action

7 November 2017 (Client Earth press release)

ClientEarth is taking legal action against the UK Government for a third time over its persistent failure to deal with illegal air pollution across the country.

The environmental law organisation said the plans still fell far short of what was needed to bring air pollution to within legal limits as soon as possible.

ClientEarth CEO James Thornton said: “The UK Government’s stubborn failure to tackle illegal and harmful levels of pollution in this country means that we have no choice but to take legal action. We need clarity from the government and for that we’ve been forced to go back to court.”

ClientEarth’s grounds for judicial review are:

The latest plan backtracks on previous commitments to order 5 cities to introduce clean air zones by 2020;

The plan does not require any action in 45 local authorities in England, despite them having illegal levels of air pollution.

The plan does not require any action by Wales to bring down air pollution as quickly as possible.

ClientEarth understands that Leicester City Council, as well as Oxford City Council have written to the government raising doubts about the plans. These include claims that the government has seriously underestimated pollution levels in their cities and excluded them from access to essential support to fight the problem.

Illegal air pollution

The UK has had illegal levels of nitrogen dioxide, which in towns and cities comes mostly from diesel vehicles, since legal limits came into effect in 2010. In order to avoid any further delay to ongoing work by Defra, DfT and local authorities, ClientEarth is not calling for the current plan to be overturned, but instead to be supplemented.

ClientEarth names the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Transport Secretary and the Cabinet Secretary for Environment and Rural Affairs in the Welsh Government as defendants.

Thornton added: “This is a national problem that requires a national solution. The government’s own evidence shows that we need a national network of charging clean air zones, which will keep the dirtiest vehicles out of the most polluted areas of our towns and cities, so why aren’t drivers being prepared for it? It’s time ministers came clean about the size of the problem and the difficult decisions needed to solve it.”

“The government should be helping people and small businesses move to cleaner forms of transport. We need fiscal policies to drive a shift away from dirty diesel, so November’s Budget will be a litmus test of the government’s resolve. The car industry helped get us into this mess so they should be helping get us out of it by contributing to a clean air fund, as they have done in Germany.”

In Germany, the government recently secured €250million from the car industry towards a fund to help German cities – where ClientEarth has been involved in a number of legal challenges – to reduce pollution. ClientEarth thinks the car industry must be part of the solution, having helped create the problem of illegal air pollution in our towns and cities in the first place.

As part of its Poisoned Playgrounds campaign, ClientEarth recently revealed that there are more than 950 schools in the UK on or near illegally polluted roads.

Latest legal challenge

ClientEarth has won two cases against the UK Government over illegal levels of air pollution in the UK.

In April 2015 the Supreme Court ordered the government to produce new air quality plans which demonstrated how it would bring air pollution down to legal levels as soon as possible.

In November 2016 the High Court declared the resulting plans illegal and ordered new ones, which were produced in July this year. It is these latest plans that ClientEarth is challenging with this latest legal action.

Government set to face fresh legal challenge from ClientEarth for inaction in cutting air pollution

October 18, 2017

Environmental lawyers, ClientEarth, are set to take the government back to court over what they say are ministers’ repeated failings to deal with the UK’s air pollution crisis. ClientEarth has already won two court battles against the government. It has has written a legal letter demanding that the environment secretary Michael Gove sets out a range of new measures to address UK air pollution. If the government fails to comply with this “letter before action”, ClientEarth will issue new proceedings and ministers are likely to face a third judicial review. The courts forced the government to produce its latest air quality plan in July but the document was widely criticised as inadequate by environmentalists and clean air campaigners. The government’s proposal had “simply passed the buck to local authorities who will have little option but to impose charges on diesel vehicles”. Better action by the government itself is needed, such as changes to the tax system to favour less polluting vehicles; a targeted diesel scrappage scheme and a “clean air fund” to help local authorities tackle pollution. In 2016 some 278 of the 391 local authorities (71%) missed their air quality targets, up from 258 in 2010 even though measures to reduce pollution are meant to be taken “in the shortest possible time”.

“When making the decision on Heathrow the government has a moral and legal duty to protect people’s health and ensure they have the right to breathe clean air.

“It shouldn’t base its decision on optimistic modelling at best and a naive view of the car industry that has proven time and time again it can’t be trusted to bring levels of air pollution down.

Heathrow air pollution must be cut drastically

“The government’s own report recently showed that diesel cars are emitting on average six times the legal limits when tested on the roads. They have even admitted one of the reasons we have toxic air is because car makers have failed to meet legal emissions limits.”

“Last year the UK Supreme Court ordered the government to draw up new plans that would bring air pollution in London within legal limits as soon as possible.

“Even without expansion, the area around Heathrow will continue to be in breach of legal pollution limits until 2025. Air pollution around the airport needs to be cut drastically before we can think about expansion.”